As non-residents of Canada, are we allowed to move our RRSP funds to a different institution?

XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX wrote:

My husband and I moved to the USA 7 years
ago, and have permanent residency status for over 1 year. We have
$40,000 in RRSP's which we are now being managed for us and for which we are
being assessed a hefty "trustee fee". As non-residents of Canada, are we
allowed to move our funds to a different institution and self direct our RRSP
funds? If so, how do we find out which institutions are licensed to hold
our RRSP accounts now that we are residents of Washington state? Our
immediate goal is to put all our RRSP's in a savings account and purchase
mutual funds etc. at a later date. Any light you can shed on this would
be gratefully received. Thank you!XXXXXXX

--------------------------------david ingram
replies:

This is a common complaint. Few Canadian financial institutions
are able to handle your monies let alone open a new account.

The answer
is yes, you can do so but the institution must have gone to the trouble to
register with the US SEC and then state governments when they do material
business (more than 4 or 5 clients in that state) within a state.

There is nothing unusual about this. A Mutual fund rep licenced in
Ontario can NOT sell a mutual fund to his brother in Alberta without being
registered in Alberta as well as Ontario.

Darrel Thompson of Blackmont
securities in Toronto at (866) 775-7704 is one individual and company who can
open a new account for a non-resident, handle the account while you are a
non-resident and buy and sell or move funds within the account while you are a
non-resident.

In BC and closer to you, Dan Walkow of Seabank Capital
can also help you with the whole process although both do not usually deal with
amounts under $50,000

Dan Walkow is available at www.seabankcapital.com or at
1-866-541-9952. AND, you can see him in person tomorrow Wednesday evening,
April 8, 2009 at www.david-ingram.com (explorer or Google
chrome - Firefox not reading properly yet) at 7 PM Vancouver (LA) time. I
will be interviewing Dan on this very topic so if you have a cross - border
investment question to ask, call us free on line during the show at
1-866-980-0499 . If you miss the actual show, there are 4 other interviews
on the topic in general at the site.And of course,
you have been filing your TDF 90-22.1 forms with the Department of Justice in
Detroit (separate mailing, not part of the tax return) to report the existence
of your foreign trust and filing form 8891 to report and exempt the internal
earnings of the RRSP And answering YES to question 7 and YES to question 8 at
the bottom of schedule B of your 1040 - Remember failure to answer YES or NO to
Question 7 on schedule B now has a minimum fine of $10,000 and the maximum is
$500,000 PLUS up to 5 years in Jail. I personally knew a 105 year old
woman who received a $10,000 fine for this and a 60 year old man who received 8
months in jail and a $100,000 fine under this
legislation.

And tomorrow night, a very special guest
for me at 6 PM will be David Hancock or www.hancockwildlife.org. David
and my computer guru/whiz/expert Richard Pitt are the people who put the eagle
nests on the net. Log on and you can see eagles hatching eggs and feeding
their young (when hatched of course).

Hope this helps and these older
questions will help as well.

Hello:

I've come across numerous online articles and appreciate some of the
learning responses I have read on related subjects - very useful.

I have an immediate query.

As a Canadian on a TN visa working in the US (will be resident alien
for this year 2008), what are the rules surrounding contributing to my
RRSP, given that I have accumulated say ie 50K of unused contribution room? On
filing my 2008 return a few months from now, can I contribute and/or does the US
SEC restrict this in some way.

Also, would you know the current restrictions surrounding making
contributions to your RRSP, through a self-directed discount brokerage acct
(still in Canada). They had mentioned to me several years ago that it was only
possible to do this if I was physically in Canada (ie during a visit), otherwise
the account would be fully restricted to sell status only.

If you are a resident alien for tax purposes in the US, in
general, your US earnings are NOT taxable in Canada under Article IV of the US /
Canada Income Tax Convention (1980) with amending protocols.

If that is
the case, you would NOT want to put any more into a Canadian RRSP.

The
reason that your brokerage can not deal with you in the USA, is that "THEY" are
not licenced to do so.

There are very few companies licenced to deal with
you cross border.

Two that are are Blackmont Securities in Toronto and
Seabank Capital in Vancouver.

At Blackmont, the only person licenced that
i know of is Darrell Thompson at 416-874-8007 or www.blackmont.com

At Seabank Capital,
there are three licenced people. try Dan Walkow at 866-541-9952 or www.seabankcapital.com.

Blackmont
is a large cross Canada organization. Seabank is a boutique operation
whose corporate goal is to deal with cross-border situations.

.However,
if you are living in the US with a Canadian RRSP, I recommend that you do NOT
leave it where you can not deal with it. You (and anyone else in the same
or similar position) should switch it to an organization that can buy or sell
for you no matter where you are.

These older answers are repetitive but
make the same point.

I start off with a comment by FH.

Good on Dan Walkow. He intercepted what
could have been a problem. There is a stipulation regarding
payment of a RRIF to a non-resident that ends up requiring a 25% tax withholding
in any payments made from a RRIF to a non-resident in the first year of the
RRIF's existence. Even if they are clearly periodic payments.
So in order to get the normal 15% hold back on my first disbursements in
2008, I have to roll my RRSP into a RRIF before calender
year end 2007.

Just in case you weren't aware of this odd
stipulation, I thought I'd pass it on. It could cost non-residents a year
of taxation at 25% instead of 15% if they don't get that RRIF in place during
the calender year prior to the one in which they intend to draw. And
the US will never give a 25% offset tax credit, unless you are in a much higher
tax bracket than most retirees.

One person on the
list wrote to say that they had satisfactory dealings with them after I wrote
the following:

If the problem is dealing with cross border investments, I
usually recommend Dan Walkow and / or Darrell Thompson

as in this older
question about the same
firm

---------------------------------------------QUESTION: 1.
have been trying to find ethical investment firm to go with in Canada and can
not seem to get any unbiased answers We live in Red Lake Ontario (landed
immigrants), but are also US citizens

david ingram replies:I have no good or bad
knowledge about Stansbery and Associates. None of my clients deal with them to
my knowledge.

From looking at their website, they seem to be a newsletter
operation as much as anything. I have about 15 interviews with newsletter
writers on gold (John Embry), oil, uranium (Martin Kafusa), silver (Sean
Rahkimov) real estate (Ozzie Jurock), futures and commodities (Victor Adai),
Resources in General (Elsworth Dickson, Publisher of Resource World) etc
at www.howestreet.com - mostly in the third column.

Two ethical people who are properly
licenced to seal with the sale of securities, IRA's 403B, RRSPs,
RRIFs, etc., to US citizens in Canada or Canadians in the US
are:

__These two individuals and their companies have gone to the effort
to get themselves registered and properly licenced just about everywhere
so they can deal with a Canadian in Florida or California or Nevada,
etc.____________________________________

Note that because of their
specialty, they tend to deal with accounts in excess of $200,000

However,
I know that both parties would welcome an exploratory call. Small
accounts do grow into larger ones and of course, you do not have to have a cross
border problem to deal with them.